"An English music
festival?! Impossible, dear girl! No-one
can put on just English music on such
a scale and make it work – impossible!
Mind you, if anyone is mad enough
to try – or tenacious enough to succeed
– it’s you!" So replied the conductor
Hilary Davan Wetton to a letter of mine
six years ago, in which I told him I
had set my heart on trying to restore
English music to its rightful place
in the classical repertoire.

In the early years
of the twentieth century this country
experienced a remarkable phenomenon
– an explosion of composers who poured
forth original works that were brilliantly
crafted, powerful, evocative, forward-looking
and often strikingly beautiful. Many
of them became extremely popular and
could be heard regularly abroad as well
as in London’s main concert halls (Stanford’s
third symphony was chosen to open the
Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and his fourth
was premiered in Berlin’s Philharmonic
Hall; Sullivan’s Golden Legend
was the second most popular work in
England after Handel’s Messiah!).
Yet in the 1950s and ’60s, when atonal
music became the vogue, and we began
to be ashamed of our national culture
and heritage – perhaps for fear of being
seen as imperialistic if we promoted
it – English music faded into obscurity
and neglect. Concert promoters abandoned
it as unfashionable and turned increasingly
to a small clique of popular composers
who they felt would bring in the crowds
or attract funding. Although the tide
is now turning, and record companies
and radio stations are rediscovering
the appeal of these gorgeous works,
English music has still not yet broken
into the mainstream concert repertoire.
I was determined to rectify this; to
bring these unjustly overlooked pieces
to live audiences.

My
insanity and tenacity appear to have
paid off, as in October this year, the
charming Oxfordshire village of Dorchester-on-Thames
hosted the first English Music Festival.
It was an artistic triumph – members
of the audience were left euphoric,
reeling from the power of the music
and the beauty of the interpretations.
The Festival opened at Dorchester’s
mediaeval abbey with the first ever
professional concert performance of
Holst’s Walt Whitman Overture,
performed by David Lloyd-Jones and the
BBC Concert Orchestra. The concert also
featured Julian Lloyd Webber (above)
playing (more passionately than I have
ever heard him before) Bridge’s deeply
moving Oration, and Holst’s Invocation.
Sullivan’s Irish Symphony concluded
proceedings, and the concert was broadcast
the following evening on BBC Radio 3.
Other highlights included a stunning
performance of York Bowen’s virtuosic
Viola Concerto, with Paul Silverthorne
(Ronald Corp conducted the New London
Orchestra), and James Gilchrist as the
soloist in Finzi’s Intimations of
Immortality on the last night (followed
by an impromptu speech by Festival President
Boris Johnson). Perhaps the greatest
moment for me, though, was Jeremy Irons
narrating Vaughan Williams’ Oxford
Elegy, with Hilary Davan Wetton
conducting the Milton Keynes City Orchestra
and City of London Choir. Not only was
Dorchester Abbey the perfect setting
for this work, but in the final lines,
that great actor demonstrated his tremendous
talents by throwing his heart and soul
into a "Roam on!" of such
electricity and power that it surely
sent a shiver down the back of everyone
present. I turned around at the end
to see half the audience moved to tears.

Music featured throughout
the Festival ranged from early music
(with the acclaimed countertenor Michael
Chance singing works by Dowland, Campion
and Purcell, the Dufay Collective presenting
a programme of music from Shakespeare’s
London, early English Guittar (sic)
music and Tonus Peregrinus performing,
amongst other works, an English St
Matthew Passion) to the present
day with an EMF commission entitled
Prayerbook. The world première
performance of this work went down a
treat with audiences in a double bill
with the complete Britten Canticles.

Works by rarely-heard
composers such as Algernon Ashton, Dale,
W H Reed, Armstrong Gibbs and Foulds
complemented pieces by the slightly
better-known names of Bax, Moeran, Elgar,
Lambert, Delius, Rutter and Wesley.
Morning, afternoon and late-evening
recitals were held at All Saints in
Sutton Courtenay – a tiny gem of a church
a few miles from Dorchester, and in
the Silk Hall at Radley College – which
also hosted the joint schools concert,
a precursor to the EMF proper, in which
children from local schools delighted
audiences with wonderfully accomplished
performances of a huge range of English
music.

With up to four concerts
and a talk every day, it was a fairly
intensive five days for all who stayed,
but I was gratified by one couple who
commented that it was "the most
wonderful week we have ever had in our
lives!" Personally, I was overwhelmed
by the outstanding quality of every
event - the performers seemed to pull
out all the stops and surpassed themselves.
There have been some excellent reviews
in both national newspapers (the Daily
Telegraph and the Independent both gave
us excellent write-ups) and the local
press (Oxford Times), and the opening
night’s broadcast was well received.

The reaction to the
Festival has been so enthusiastic and
positive – from both audience and artists
– that I am already planning the next
Festival. Meanwhile, we need help with
fundraising to ensure that future festivals
are as successful in financial terms
as this year was artistically. We have
a current introductory offer of a minimum
donation of £25 to join our flourishing
and much-valued Friends Scheme and would
exhort anyone interested to sign up
and help us in our crucial work to bring
this amazing music back to national
recognition. This year has proved, at
least, that there are some stunning
unknown works out there, that audiences
love the pieces and will travel a long
way to hear them, and that an English
Music Festival can work fantastically
well!

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